There’s something almost poetic about America’s amnesia. We were born from rebellion, baptized in the fires of anti-monarchy, raised on pamphlets that screamed no man is above the law. We once dumped tea in harbors and bled on battlefields to escape the tyranny of kings. And now, two and a half centuries later, millions of Americans have lined up to kiss the ring of a man who literally sells gold sneakers with his own name on them.
It’s almost admirable—the full circle of it. We didn’t just forget our history; we gift-wrapped it, autographed it, and sold it on Truth Social for $399 a pair.
From Revolution to Reality TV
The American experiment began with a middle finger to monarchy. Our founding fathers, hypocritical as they often were, at least understood the assignment: government should serve the governed, not the other way around. They built a republic of checks and balances precisely to avoid what we’re now watching on Fox News—an orange-tinted monarch waving from the golf cart throne while his courtiers sob about “witch hunts.”
George Washington could have been king. People begged him to be. He said no. Trump, on the other hand, lost an election and spent four years pretending the Constitution was a Yelp review he could edit.
That’s the thing about fascism—it never marches in wearing a swastika and jackboots. It arrives in a red hat, holding a flag, promising to “make America great again” while quietly dismantling the very idea of America. Fascism doesn’t need to burn the Constitution; it just needs enough people to stop reading it.
The Patriot’s Paradox
There’s nothing more American than distrusting authority—at least, that’s what we used to tell ourselves. We mocked kings, distrusted priests, and threw off colonial masters. It’s written into our DNA: defiance, independence, rebellion. Yet somehow, the movement that claims to be the most patriotic has become a cult of obedience.
MAGA isn’t conservatism; it’s cosplay monarchy. Every rally is a coronation. Every indictment a martyrdom. The same people who once screamed about “government overreach” now beg to be ruled by a man who thinks due process is an inconvenience and laws are for other people.
Their rallies have all the energy of Versailles—if Versailles sold merch and smelled faintly of Monster Energy and tanning lotion. The loyalists chant his name like it’s a national anthem, and when he forgets the words to the real one, they call it authenticity.
Being “anti-king” used to mean you believed in freedom. Now it means you’re a “globalist.” Being “anti-fascist” used to mean you were on the right side of history. Now it’s a slur. Somewhere between the Boston Tea Party and the Boebert re-election campaign, we lost the plot.
When Liberty Became a Brand
The most American thing you can do, apparently, is confuse liberty with branding. Freedom has been re-issued as a lifestyle accessory—available in camo, made in China, shipped express. The Founders had muskets and pamphlets; we have bumper stickers and digital avatars screaming in all caps.
Our revolutionaries wore rags and froze at Valley Forge. Today’s patriots wear tactical vests to Target and post selfies captioned “1776 will rise again.” They call themselves “constitutionalists” but have never read the document they’re defending. They can quote the Second Amendment from memory but go blank at the First.
It’s hard to overstate how absurd it all is. We have become a nation allergic to nuance, addicted to outrage, and nostalgic for an America that never actually existed. We love freedom so much that we’ve redefined it as the right to oppress other people.
The MAGA movement didn’t just forget that America was founded on opposition to tyranny—it recast tyranny as a form of patriotism. The king just looks different now. He tweets instead of decrees, holds rallies instead of court, and builds walls instead of palaces. But the result is the same: loyalty without logic, power without principle.
The Great American Role Reversal
If history were a movie, this would be the part where the audience groans at how heavy-handed the symbolism has gotten. The revolutionaries are cheering for the crown, the rebels are begging for a ruler, and the entire plot has been reduced to reruns of The Apprentice: Dictator’s Edition.
Trump isn’t a political figure anymore; he’s a mythology. He’s Elvis with executive power, a one-man religion whose gospel is grievance and whose followers believe persecution is proof of purity. And every time the justice system tries to hold him accountable, the base interprets it as divine confirmation.
Remember when Americans used to distrust strongmen? Now they confuse them with saviors. They think democracy is fragile because of immigrants, not because of their own indifference. They rail against “elites” while worshipping a billionaire who wouldn’t share an elevator with them. They wear “Don’t Tread on Me” flags while cheering for a man who would trample them for sport.
That’s not patriotism. That’s Stockholm Syndrome set to the tune of “Proud to Be an American.”
Our Founding Fathers Would Vomit
You can almost picture it: Jefferson scrolling through Truth Social, Washington watching a MAGA rally on Fox, Franklin trying to invent a lightning rod sturdy enough to deflect the stupidity.
Washington would be horrified to see that “revolutionary spirit” now manifests as attacking police officers with flagpoles. Jefferson would faint at how easily “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were replaced by “fear, rage, and the pursuit of retweets.” Franklin, ever the pragmatist, would probably just shrug and say, “Well, you warned them about keeping it—a republic, if you can.”
The Founders were imperfect men—hypocrites, many of them—but even they knew that unchecked power was poison. They built a government designed to frustrate tyranny. MAGA wants to bulldoze it in the name of “efficiency.” They want to elect a man who promises to “terminate” parts of the Constitution—then call it patriotism.
It’s like watching someone burn a library to save literacy.
The Cult of the Crown
There’s a cruel irony in how America’s original anti-monarchists have become monarchists in disguise. MAGA has everything a royal court needs: a bloated sovereign, a choir of flatterers, and a myth of divine legitimacy. The only difference is that our king prefers fast food to foie gras.
Every press conference feels like a royal decree. Every rally a coronation. Every mugshot a holy relic. The MAGA faithful have turned grievance into gospel, power into purity, and the presidency into a hereditary right.
They call it “America First,” but it’s really “The King First.” It’s the same story every autocracy tells: the strongman as savior, the critics as enemies, the truth as treason. We once revolted against that idea. Now half the country worships it.
And it’s working—not because the tyrant is cunning, but because the citizens are tired. Fascism doesn’t need brilliance; it just needs exhaustion. It needs a public so numb, so cynical, that they stop believing change is possible. Once that happens, tyranny sells itself as stability.
Freedom Requires Effort (And Apparently We’re Out of It)
Democracy, unlike monarchy, demands participation. It requires attention spans longer than a TikTok clip and moral compasses that can’t be bought in bulk. That’s the real problem: freedom isn’t fun. It’s maintenance. It’s boring paperwork and compromise and holding people accountable even when you like them.
Fascism, on the other hand, is easy. It’s simple. It tells you who to hate, where to point your anger, and which slogans to chant. It replaces thinking with belonging. It makes you feel powerful while making you powerless. It’s the perfect system for a population raised on reality television and weaponized nostalgia.
We used to believe citizenship meant questioning authority. Now, questioning authority is treated like sedition. We used to value dissent; now we call it treason. Somewhere along the way, “we the people” turned into “we the followers.”
The Myth of the Golden Age
Every fascist movement is built on the myth of a lost paradise. “Make America Great Again” only works if you ignore the parts of America that were never great for anyone else. The past they want to resurrect is a fantasy—a postcard of white picket fences hiding segregation, misogyny, and fear.
They don’t want to fix America; they want to rewind it. They want a world where truth bends to power, where cruelty passes for strength, and where a man born rich can claim victimhood without irony.
But here’s the catch: there was never a time when America belonged to one kind of person, one religion, one ideology. The greatness of this country has always been its argument with itself. The moment that argument ends—the moment dissent becomes disloyalty—is the moment we stop being America.
History’s Funniest Joke
The ultimate punchline is that the people waving flags the hardest are the ones forgetting what those flags stand for. They claim to love the Founders while embodying everything the Founders feared. They shout “1776” while behaving like 1775.
It’s as if they think the Revolution was fought to establish hereditary power instead of abolish it. As if “freedom” means pledging fealty to a single man rather than protecting the liberty of millions. As if the entire point of America wasn’t to prove that no king—foreign or domestic—can rule forever.
If irony were an Olympic sport, MAGA would bring home the gold, silver, and bronze, then accuse the judges of election fraud.
The American Way (Remember That?)
At its best, America was never about perfection. It was about rejection—of kings, of tyrants, of the idea that obedience is virtue. The American spirit was built on rebellion, on calling bullshit when you saw it, on believing that authority without accountability is just a fancy word for slavery.
We weren’t supposed to worship our leaders; we were supposed to replace them. We weren’t supposed to follow one man; we were supposed to follow an idea. That’s the real patriotism—not blind loyalty, not performative rage, but the stubborn insistence that no one gets to crown themselves king of a free people.
So yes, there’s nothing more American than being anti-fascist. Nothing more patriotic than standing up to power, even when it wraps itself in the flag. The Founders didn’t fight for unanimity; they fought for disagreement. They didn’t write the Constitution for comfort; they wrote it for conflict.
We used to know that. Before the red hats. Before the gold sneakers. Before the country that once swore to overthrow kings started chanting for one.
Maybe we still do know it, deep down—buried under the noise, the algorithms, and the slogans. Because no matter how many crowns we forge out of resentment, no matter how many flags we wave for tyrants, there will always be Americans who remember that the truest act of patriotism isn’t kneeling before power.
It’s saying no to it. Every single time.